Firearms Technology

No signs mark the outside of the hidden 1960s-vintage government facility in the bucolic countryside of West Virginia’s panhandle.

Even the parking lot is obscured by black tarps lining a cyclone fence.

But just inside the warehouse-like brick building is the National Tracing Center, the epicenter of efforts by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to combat and control illegal gun use. When police need to trace a captured gun — be it from Durango, Mexico, or Durango, Colorado — the request lands here.